It looks like nothing was found at this location. Maybe try a search or browse one of our posts below.

I have just one question about Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s comments regarding women’s compensation: Did he deserve all the outrage?

Let’s start with his actual words:

Maria Klawe: What do you advise women who are interested in advancing their careers but they’re not comfortable with putting themselves up for promotions or advanced opportunities?

Satya Nadella: The thing that perhaps most  influenced me in terms of how you look at the journey or a career…There was this guy whose name is Mike Naples who was President of Microsoft when I joined, and he has this saying that all HR systems are long-term efficient, short-term inefficient.

And I thought that phrase just captured it. Which is…it’s not really about asking for the raise but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go long.

And that I think might be one of the additional “superpowers,” that quite frankly, women who don’t ask for a raise have. Because that’s good karma. It will come back. Somebody’s going to know that’s the kind of person I want to trust. That’s the kind of person that I want to give more responsibility to.

And in the long-term efficiency, things catch up. And I wonder whether taking the long-term approach helps solve for “Am I getting paid right?” Am I getting rewarded right?” The reality is the best work is not followed with your best rewards. Your best work then has impact, people recognize it, and then you get the rewards. And you somehow have to think that through.”

Opinion: The problem here isn’t that Nadella is insensitive to women’s realities. It’s that he’s insensitive to how things happen here on the planet I like to call “earth.”

The problem, that is, is that this isn’t how things actually work.

When an employee, male or female, does great work and that great work has impact, that doesn’t mean anyone in management will even know which employee deserves the credit.

Credit-stealing is routine in American business. Worse, or perhaps better, great work and impact are usually produced by a team. Balancing the importance of valuing team effort with the varying contributions of different team members is quite a difficult feat.

Also, Nadella seems to be implying that promotions and raises come from doing something that has a strong positive impact. I sure hope not. That’s what bonuses are for. Employers should give employees raises when they’re worth more in the employment marketplace, and promotions when they’re capable of a more responsible and valuable job.

What happens instead: When companies underpay employees the result is a short-term increase in profitability. And as accounting systems don’t have any way to represent the loss of talented employees on financial statements, the whole system is tilted in this direction.

The result: In the vast majority of corporations, employees don’t get what they deserve, they get what they negotiate, just like the ad in the in-flight magazines tells you.

Nardella’s response was, in many respects, thoughtful. The problem was that he failed to include something critical, namely, useful advice for the world as it actually is. A far better response would have been:

The situation for women at Microsoft … and at any other company, but I only have influence over Microsoft … should be exactly like the situation for male employees. What we’re striving for is that no employee should ever have to ask for a raise or promotion. We want every employee to be in a position they can succeed in, and that provides them with opportunities to achieve and grow. And we want to pay every employee what he or she is truly worth.

If we’re failing to do that for any employee, that employee should make her … or his … case and we should listen and make an objective judgment. We should give that employee a raise or promotion if one is warranted, and an honest response either way.

As a general rule, in U.S. businesses at least, men are better at negotiating these things than women. Worse, it’s considered okay for men to negotiate such things, much more so than for women who do the exact same thing.

And as the big three when it comes to compensation de-motivators are arrogance, disrespect and unfairness, it’s unsurprising that women, more than men, are likely to find their compensation de-motivating.

Were Mr. Nardella’s words disrespectful to women? I don’t think so. They were worse than that.

They were terrible advice.

Another reason the world won’t go Digital on schedule, heavily redacted and anonymized:

My wife is the {unspecified position} for a small, boutique {unspecified services} firm. As such, she has to process {unspecified business transactions} constantly. To help with all the needed {non-generic due diligence} (they do a lot of government work), they use a {non-generic screening service] from a fairly well known company in that space.

A few weeks ago, the screening company pushed out a new version of its software and portal.

It was a shambles! What had been a quick, routine part of my wife’s day had become a nightmarish game of frozen screens, endless time on hold, being shuffled around from one support person to another, and STILL not getting the needed {non-generic due diligence} done.

Of course, her sales department was yelling at her too, for being slow in performing the {non-generic due diligence} needed to perform the services they’d sold their customers.

About a week after the rollout, she received the following email, ostensibly from the {non-generic screening service} firm’s CEO:

============================================ 

From: {Name of CEO}

Sent: {sometime this summer}, 2018

To: {Helpless Customers}

Subject: {Our Flagship Product} Technology Update

Good afternoon,

On {date}, we released our all-new {clever acronym} screening technology. From development through implementation, our goal has always been the same — to deliver the best experience for you, our customers.

Last week’s release was the culmination of more than two years of development. It would be an understatement to say we’re excited. But with that excitement comes an awareness that this platform is far from perfect.

We fully understand that a release this ambitious and of this magnitude is bound to have issues, and you’re likely experiencing some of those issues first-hand. After the first week of wide release, many of the reported bugs have been minor. We are fixing and improving every day.

This initial launch is just the beginning of a new chapter for {company name}. We’re playing the long game — working constantly to fine-tune the technology through your feedback. We hope you already see the power and speed behind this incredible new platform. It’s only the beginning.

As we have for the past {number of years}, we’re here to help. Helpful tutorials and videos {link provided} are available in the resource center {link provided} of the {clever acronym} dashboard. And our friendly team is here to assist you in any way they’re able. Please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Thank you for your patience with us during this transition, as we work aggressively to fix bugs and improve the platform. 

Thank you for your trust in us to be your screening partner. We never take your partnership for granted and work every day to redefine value in {non-generic screening services}.

Sincerely,

{First name of CEO}

{Company logo, address and contact info}

{Inspiring quote from an old NFL football coach}

============================================

Where to start …

Communication: Groucho Marx once asked, “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?” That was supposed to be comedy, not a serious business message. Don’t send spin to the people with direct experience. Send it to everyone else, to convince them the people experiencing the problem are exaggerating.

Software Quality Assurance: The first rule of SQA is that you always test. Sometimes you test before you put software into production. Sometimes you test by putting it into production.

Before is better.

Your customers’ SQA matters too. Just because you’re a cloud provider, that doesn’t mean you’re providing an “island of automation.” Quite the opposite, as SaaS becomes more important, integrating SaaS applications into the rest of the applications portfolio becomes exponentially more important (actually, polynomially more important, but let’s not quibble).

The consequence: A SaaS provider’s internal testing should be just the beginning. After that its customers should have a chance to regression test new releases to make sure they don’t break internal IT’s integrations.

Along the way, its customers’ end-users would be in a position to discover whether the new release is a turkey, before it’s inflicted on everyone.

The Cloud doesn’t change the rules. It makes them more important. For example, well-run internal IT follows a simply stated rule when it comes to implementing software changes: Always have a back-out plan. If, in spite of SQA’s best efforts, the software turns out to be unusable, internal IT restores the previous version to minimize business disruption.

Just because you’re a SaaS provider that doesn’t mean you get to ignore the basics.

You have to master them.